Parade
by G A B S Lubs H I M
Summary: Semi AU. And she doesn’t care if it bloody snows on her parade. She still wins. Sakura-centric. Third-place Winner in Vesper-chan's December Contest.


**Parade**

G A B S

--

Summary: [Semi AU] And she doesn't care if it bloody _snows_ on her parade. She still wins. [Sakura]

* * *

When he stumbles through the golden-rod gates, she isn't surprised.

His shirt is stained and bloodied and damn near incinerated, but there is a look in his eyes just before they slide shut with exhaustion that she is familiar with. She ignores her initial sharp intake of breath for something more practical and hefts his weakened body over her shoulder, careful not to disturb the gaping hole that goes right through his hip.

Her hands slide together almost absentmindedly, and she revels in the feel of the swift air that rushes her face as she appears in the Godaime's office.

When her mentor rushes forward, she isn't reluctant to toss, _place_, the boy on the blonde's desk and step aside. She _is _surprised that she finds no interest within herself to stare at the pale face laying so very still in front of her. Instead, her eyes are drawn to the various hand signs Tsunade is performing, and she silently commits them to memory for future use.

Sakura isn't compelled to speak or move or offer her assistance to her teacher, and Tsunade does not ask. She finds herself interested in the large oak doors separating her from the world outside the Hokage's office, and, in a moment, she finds she has somehow wandered out without so much as a glance backwards.

Tsunade is not surprised to feel her student's chakra dissipating, though she is vaguely impressed that Sakura has recovered so soon after the Uchiha's return. Shrugging it off, she returns her attention to the boy. Sasuke's wounds are far less grievous than they appear, and soon enough she is bandaging him up and calling Shizune's name so her oldest apprentice can make hospital preparations.

Sometime later, she silently watches as two nurses, whose names escape her, push the weakened boy out of her office on a stretcher. When the doors close tightly behind them, she slumps into her chair, wondering if this is a good omen or a bad one. Gripping her temples tightly, Tsunade reaches for the unopened bottle of sake she'd hidden under her desk for such occasions, and takes her time drinking her frustrations away.

--

Naruto is gently awoken by a smooth hand cupping his cheek lovingly, and he leans into Hinata's fingers. He manages to slur out a question, and his wife giggles behind her lips, and replies that, "It's five in the morning." This catches her fox's attention, and he is immediately sitting up and clutching her small hands inside his own, concern written all over his face.

Hinata gently reassures him she is fine, but as soon as the words leave her mouth, Naruto is alerted to the third presence in the room. Eyes bright with brotherly affection, he quickly turns to the feminine shadow standing in the corner, his lips forming her name before he can even register the meaning behind her visit.

"Sakura," he breathes, and the pinkette smiles fondly back at him. Hinata nudges him forward, and he rushes his dear friend with a strong hug. Sakura reciprocates, but she quietly pushes him off after a few moments and fixes him with a serious stare.

Naruto looks confused for a moment but quickly snaps on a light and leads his two favorite women to the dining area of his house and sits down obediently at the table. Absentmindedly, he runs his calloused fingers over the aged oak, and fondly recalls it had been a gift from Hinata's father, Hiashi, when the stuck-up bastard had finally accepted their union and given them his blessing. Swiftly shaking such distractions from is head, he focuses his attention on his best friend.

Sakura is quiet for a long time, and while Naruto expects her to be shaking or angry or _something_ to tip him off to what this is all about, she is strangely still in her chair, her hands resting comfortably against her mouth as she leans her elbows forward on the table.

"He's back," she suddenly murmurs, her voice thick with something Naruto does not recognize, but he has little time to contemplate it as the gravity of her words sinks into him, and he bolts upwards out of his chair.

"Wha-? The bast-?! Sakura, are you sure?!"

She nods her assent, and he is momentarily too shocked to do much more than stare at the top of her pink head, but soon he is dashing around the table and sweeping her into as tight an embrace as he can muster.

Sakura tries to squeeze him back. She tries to share his enthusiasm; she really does. It's just that… she _can't._

Her blue-eyed best friend notices immediately and he swiftly retracts his arms, as if burned.

"You're not happy, Sakura-chan."

She nods again, as Naruto has always had a strange acuity***** for his friends' feelings.

He sighs into his hands and repels the oncoming feeling of pain that is threatening to overwhelm him. Naruto is saddened for his girl, but he knows nothing he can do will help. Instead of trying to comfort her with empty words, he latches back onto her and hugs her tightly again, before pushing off her shoulders and goofily demanding she 'lead him to the prisoner.'

Hinata smiles and follows her husband and best friend as the older girl walks them out of the house and down the block. The hospital is only a block from their house, and Sakura is soon leaving their company.

"He should be here by now. Shishou should've finished healing him a while ago. Visiting hours are over, but just tell the lady at the front desk your names and she'll let you in. I'll see you around."

Her pink hair is gone so fast that Naruto has no time to reach out and hold her, for she is hurting and running and crying inside and he only wants to help. But she's gone, and he knows better than to chase her.

Twining his fingers with his wife's, Naruto leads her into the hospital, and soon enough, as Sakura predicted, he is being led to the room of the only person he has ever failed to save.

He is to be the Rokudaime in three months time, has fought many foes against great odds, has lived to see many terrifying things occur, and he has never been phased. But, as he reaches for the smooth, chilled handle of the hospital room door, he finds he is really and truly scared.

He goes in anyway.

--

Three weeks have passed since she had spotted his bloodied carcass dragging itself through the gates at three in the morning. She muses over how lucky he was that she had been there, leaving on a solo mission, but quickly kills any traitorous thoughts that dare to suggest it as anything more significant than mere luck and coincidence.

After she had brought Naruto to the hospital, she had quickly resumed her original task, and headed out on her mission. It is only now that she is returning to her home. The mission, a simple assassination, had gone as much as expected, and Sakura is returning tired, but victorious.

She nods to Neji, who is on guard duty, and he regards her with a small incline of the head in turn.

She quickly apparates to the Godaime's office, feeling sore and wanting nothing more than to submit her mission report and retire for the day. But when she appears before the oak doors blocking her from her mentor, she is glad she had not decided to apparate directly into the room.

Sasuke's voice is croaking and dry and nowhere near the dulcet***** bass she remembers, but it is _his_ voice that is floating from within the room, and she takes an involuntary step backwards.

_He is awake._

She realizes this, and finds that, suddenly, all she wants is to go home and curl under her blankets and fall asleep, because, _damnit,_ this isn't _fair._

"Sakura?" Tsunade calls from within, having become aware of her chakra signature, but it is too late, and the younger woman is furiously making hand signals and retreating because for _God's sake_, she knew when she was walking into a lose-lose situation. She quickly mutters the words under her breath as she feels her chakra pumping around her, and her scenery changes.

On the other side of the doors she had previously been standing in front of, a boy with dark hair is frozen, and his once frozen eyes are melting with adrenaline. He is an heir, and an avenger, and so many things in between, but he is not composed as is characteristic of his titles.

_She was here_, he thinks, and he can't breathe. He tries to be discreet, but Tsunade is a wise drunk, and she notes how his breath had caught when she had called out to her apprentice. She quietly files the information away for later, and turns back to discussing the matter of his imprisonment.

Sasuke resumes his normal respiratory functions and tries to put striking green eyes out of his mind and think about negotiating down his already watered-down punishment, as he'd been doing before the…_interruption_, but he finds he can't think as straight as he would like. Quickly realizing he'll be getting nowhere fast, Sasuke agrees to Tsunade's terms and requests to take his leave.

She regards his agitated attitude and concedes.

Sasuke pretends he doesn't notice Tsunade's smug smirk, and he quickly retreats to his hospital room, because, thus far, it is the only thing he knows.

--

It is snowing, and Sakura is reminded it is December. For a moment, she is drawn in by the sweet whiteness surrounding her, but the spell is broken at the sight of the black blot standing at the edge of her yard.

She tries to pretend it doesn't bother her that he looks positively chilled to the bone, or that he lacks a coat and it's _bloody snowing_ on him, but her resilience takes a backseat to her medical training, and she quickly swings her door open and silently invites him inside.

He doesn't meet her eyes, but he shuffles into the warmth of her living room, and she slams the door behind him, though she is unsure whether it is an effort to block the cold or something else that causes her to use so much force.

She offers him some tea and he gratefully accepts. An hour passes in silence as they sip their tea together, and she finds herself losing the edge that had ignited the tension in her shoulders.

She speaks first.

"Naruto told me you and he had a nice, long chat."

Sasuke blinks but nods, a warm and comforting feeling rising in him as he remembers the friendly encounter with fondness.

"He says you two talked it out and everything is hunky-dory."

Sasuke notes the almost dangerous inflection in her voice, and wisely keeps his mouth shut.

"He told me you'd be coming by to fix the last broken link between Team Seven, since he said Kakashi has already reconciled with you."

He nods at this, testing the waters of responding very tentatively, realizing she was in no mood to be handled lightly.

Sakura is taciturn for another few minutes, but when she opens her mouth again, he can almost feel the anger radiating off of her.

"You know I'm not going to let it be so easy. You can't just have a 'nice conversation' with me and expect this to all go away."

He nods again, wincing at the painful feeling stirring inside of him as he waits patiently for her to finish.

"I hated you, you know. You left me in the rain, on a BENCH, without so much as a thought to my welfare. I was your teammate and you should have at _least_ had the decency to leave me somewhere out of harm's way."

She collects herself for a moment by calmly sipping her jasmine tea, and she is inwardly proud that she has thus far been able to articulate herself and her feelings properly.

Sasuke winces again when she opens her mouth to continue berating him, but she stops, closes it, and refuses to speak until he has officially joined the conversation.

He struggles to find the words.

"I-I…I don't…what happened…" he tries, but the words will not come, and he is too busy looking at the rosy color of her lips***** to formulate a coherent strategy to _force _them out, and suddenly he is upon her, his purpled lips cold and yet still searing to the touch as he slants his mouth over hers, praying she will understand.

Sakura is frozen for a moment before she pulls away from his desperate lips and looks him dead in the eye. Then, without breaking eye contact, she leans forward and kisses him on the lips, and even though she is reciprocating, Sasuke's onyx eyes are searching her fig ones, and realizing it is _not_ what he wants.

She isn't kissing him back because she wants him. She is kissing him back to say goodbye. And he cannot let her do that.

So he opens his mouth and tries one last time to make the words come.

"I love you," he says, and he is surprised he does not stutter this time. She blinks at him and his words, but she makes no other move to respond to such a declaration.

She vaguely recalls that, in the civilian lands, something called Christmas is happening tomorrow, and is supposed to be the day of love and wishes and fulfillment. At Sasuke's words, she wonders if this may have some truth to it, but she quickly flushes the idea away.

Seconds turn into minutes, and she watches him squirm as he waits for her response. When nothing comes, he finally loses it, and he grips her by the shoulders and stares into her eyes, searching for something _anything_ to give him a clue as to her feelings.

And Sakura is suddenly thrown back into her memories. She has been waiting to hear those words from him for many, many years. Her younger self would have shaved her own head to hear them, and Sakura knows he is going out on limb and leaving himself open to her, and she is moved by waves of emotion. Unable to contain her raging emotional state, she grasps her teammate by the shoulders and pulls him into a fierce hug.

But she makes no move to kiss him or hold his hands or anything he had expected her to do, because Sasuke is not the only man she sees in her memories.

_He _is there as well, and though Sasuke takes up the space of nearly all of her childhood memories, it is the other man who sends her heart into a frenzy.

Sasuke pulls away from her, and stares into her eyes, and for the first time, he notices the change in her fig-green eyes, and he knows it was not himself who put it there.

There is a happiness in her eyes that makes them glow, even though she is looking sadly at him, and Sasuke is somehow relieved to see it, because it means he did not break her all the way through.

But sadness fills him like wine fills a goblet, because he _missed her _and he really does _love her_. However, he is not the idiot he once was, and his coal-colored eyes soften and he, in a moment of sudden clarity, pulls her back into his arms. This time, he kisses her head, and, while she is wrapped around his torso with her face buried into his shirt, he finds a few stray tears are leaking out his eyes because _damnit_, he _never wins_, but it's okay, because he loves her enough to know he doesn't deserve her.

She smiles up at him when they leave the embrace, and, for once, Sasuke is not bitter to have lost.

He just wants to know. So when he pats her on the head and apologizes, for real this time, for all he has done to ruin their bond of friendship, the question slips out. His ears redden and burn at how pathetic he sounds, but she only giggles behind her hand.

When she tells him the name of the man who has stolen her heart from him, right from under his nose, he is momentarily stunned. He regains his composure, though, and he is quietly amused that she always attracts the broken ones so she can fix them up again. Himself. Naruto. And now this guy, who, Sasuke was sure, had to be the most broken of them all.

She keeps smiling at him, though he has grown silent, and he is awed at her innocence. He peacefully resigns himself to unrequitedly love her forever, and he smiles, because, even if it hurts, it's alright.

With her, anything is alright.

--

It is sometime later when he arrives home. He is freezing, and angry, and worried, but he is home now, and he faintly registers the calmness of her chakra, and it calms him too.

He unlocks the door leading into their house, and, once it is shut firmly behind him, he deposits his scarf, gloves, parka, and boots on the floor in front of it. _Snow_, he grumbles to himself, _is disgusting_. And he is once again painfully reminded that this is _not _his element AT ALL, and he almost whines longingly when he thinks of the vast, oppressive heat he is used to being in.

He slowly creeps into their room, careful not to disturb the floorboards and risk waking her prematurely. He kneels beside their bed and, for the longest time, just drinks in her beautiful features. After an eternity, he reaches a hand out to stroke her hair, and the other gently touches her smooth, perfect cheek, as if to assure himself that the ethereal image before him is not some figment of his disturbed imagination.

At the soft feel of his calloused hands on her cheek, Sakura's long midnight lashes***** flutter away from her cream skin, and her green irises stare deep into his own dark eyes.

She smiles sleepily, and lifts a hand to him, stroking his hair with her nimble fingers.

"I'm back early," he starts, and he is filled with joy when he sees her eyes alight with pleasure as she realizes he is indeed home much earlier than expected. "I couldn't…I couldn't stop thinking about you while we were apart. It was driving me mad, you know, to be away from you for so long."

She shocked by his uncharacteristic display of raw emotion, but she is soon too jovial about it to care too much _why_ he is acting so forward with his emotions.

"I missed you too," she mutters, and pulls him in for a searing kiss that is nothing like and yet so much more than the one Sasuke had bestowed upon her.

He climbs into bed with her and their bodies thrum delightedly as they meet each other, as if they have been apart for more than a few months.

They silently hold one another for a long time and she is beginning to doze off when, unbidden, he says something that strikes her as odd, and yet, in its own way, quite magical.

"It's Christmas morning, you know. In-In the civilian lands, they believe a savior, some kind of hero, was born on this day to bring love and peace to all the land."

Wide-eyed, Sakura digests this information, slightly shaken that she herself had been thinking about the same thing only hours before.

"I don't…I don't _know_ what's true about this holiday," he begins, sounding unsure, "but I want to share the love it represents with _you_."

He musters up the last of his courage, the last of his uncharacteristic openness, and he tells her the one thing he has been struggling for years to say.

"I love you."

--

Sakura has been many things in her life. She has been a civilian, a lover, a fighter, a killer, a healer, a friend, an enemy, and, most of all, she has been the one person to always lose.

But when he tells her those three little words, it doesn't matter if she loses her next sparring match with Lee, or if Kakashi doubts her abilities as a nin, or if Sasuke declares his undying love for her just as she has moved on.

For once, for one single, solitary moment in time, _she is winning_ at something. She is no longer living in a world of unrequited love, because _he loves her_ too, and she is finally, FINALLY happy.

And she doesn't care if the whole world collapses tomorrow, or the Akatsuki attack, or if Tsunade gambles away all of the money in the world, because she is having her own damn parade in her head where none of those things matter.

And she doesn't care if it bloody _snows_ on her parade. She still wins. Even if it's just this one time. And she is happy, because

"I love you too, Gaara."

--

FIN.

Entry for Vesper-chan's December Contest. Words were *acuity, *dulcet, *lips, *lashes, in that order. Enjoy :)


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